Day one - Travelling to Poland

Our adventure started at before eight in the morning, Guillem and Salomé met up in Ferreries and then drove up to my house to pick me up, a little late but no problems.

We set off in the middle of a howling gale, really strong winds and at that moment they seemed to be a foretaste of what we thought awaited us in Poland.

We got to Reus without any mishap but when we got our stuff out of the back of the car I asked if they had weighed their cases. For Salomé this wasn't a problem as her case was relatively small and weighed like mine (I had weighed mine and it was 14.6 kg) but Guillem had the case he takes skiing and it is large. Hefting it it didn't seem to weigh like mine either.

Sure enough at the weigh in it came in at two kilos overweight, "what do you want to do?" The girl asked, "pay for the extra weight or take something out?" We all agreed to take things out.

He put his boots on and took out some other stuff and we rechecked the case, 14 kilos this time. Great... but hang on... as the case disappeared we realised what we had take out was his toilletries bag!! With all the liquids, how was he going to get past the security check?

In the queue for the security check I can honestly say it was one of the only times I have seen Guillem worried on a trip. In the end we just thought of saying nothing. He asked about liquids and the man said, "what is it?" Guillem answered cologne and he was told to put it in a plastic bag. This done he sailed through the control and it was me that was searched had to take my belt off etc!!

The flight to Stansted was quite pleasant but it was nice to get off the plane once there. We found the check in for Ryan air and then resorted Guillem's suitcase to hide the offending bottles inside his case. This time it was a kilo over but the girl said nothing.

Here you can see Guillem repacking his suitcase with Salomé's help

This time we got through security with no problems though I even had to take my shoes off!!

Our flight from Stansted to Katowice was fairly uneventful, we even had a chance to learn some Polish with the people on the plane.

Here you have the report on our second flight, made during the take off preparations on the flight.

We were met at the airport by a taxi driver, we later discovered his name was Artur, he packed us into his Mercedes and we set of for the hotel. It took us well over an hour and we were glad to get there by the end of the trip. Lots of back roads and bad surfaces, the only decent road had road works where we were stopped for ages. Plus perhaps the thing that freaked us out most was that as the flight was landing we had realised that it was getting dark... at four in the afternoon!!

At the hotel we checked in with no problems and decided not to explore any further for our evening meal. So we ordered in the hotel and had the first really pleasant surprise of many here, we discovered that the food really in excellent.